St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is the top charity for evangelical Christians, followed by The Salvation Army, according to a new survey of charitable donors.
The survey, conducted by Grey Matter Research & Consulting and the marketing firm Infinity Concepts, was released Wednesday.
“There are a lot of people who like to look at the evangelical community as being in many ways radically different [from non-evangelicals],” Grey Matter President Ron Sellers said in an interview. “But in many ways [they] look like just average Americans.”
The survey identified evangelicals as those who strongly embrace theological views such as the Bible being the highest authority for belief, the importance of witnessing to non-Christians, that Christ’s death is the only remedy for sin’s penalties and that only those who trust in Christ alone are saved.
About 59 million American adults, or 23%, are evangelicals, according to the survey.
Twelve of the 19 charities favored by evangelicals are also supported by the general public, the survey found. Seven of the 19 are faith-based.
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The top five charities among evangelicals are St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (15%), The Salvation Army (8%), the American Red Cross (4%), Samaritan’s Purse (4%) and UNICEF (3%). Only Samaritan’s Purse, headed by the Rev. Franklin Graham, and The Salvation Army, which operates churches across the nation, are distinctively evangelical.
“You can’t expect evangelicals to favor you just because you’re an evangelical organization or a broadly Christian organization,” Mr. Sellers said. “The huge organizations out there, the secular organizations that can say largely the same things [evangelicals] are saying, and they can generally say it more often, and louder, better, because they have the funds to get that message out there.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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